Lasers are used for many purposes including measuring, labeling and marking, printing, and material processing. Certain applications require high power lasers such as material processing including welding, particle acceleration, and certain military applications.
One type of laser that has been used for high power applications is a zig-zag laser. In a zig-zag laser, the beam path travels in a zig-zag fashion relative to the longitudinal axis of the active region or gain medium. The beam can pass through various mediums including the coolant.
In the generation of high power in a laser, there are several issues that need to be addressed, including the removal of heat from the laser and the management of thermal effects. If the thermal effects are not properly managed, both the power efficiency and the quality of the output or beam can be affected. The quality of the beam is generally related to the ability of the beam to focus in far field, that is the “beam parameter product” which takes into account the beam radius and the beam divergence.